While travel is often regarded as a fun way to escape everyday life and experience new things, the benefits it offers to your mind and soul reach far beyond just that. Travel can be a liberating experience; an opportunity to step outside your comfort zone and experience life as you never imagined. It can be a teaching experience – a chance to immerse yourself in a new culture or different way of life. It can also be an eye-opening experience and one that leads to great personal growth, change and even re-evaluation. Let’s look at just a few of the ways that travel is so powerful and how it can help you grow.

1. Strengthen (and Challenge) Your Relationship

We’ve all seen at least one movie or read one book in which a couple heads out on an adventure, only to wind up questioning everything about their bond along the way. In a sense this is true, as travel puts both partner outside of his or her comfort zone and challenges you both to experience different challenges, obstacles and joys. However, travel can be an excellent way to strengthen your relationship. You’ll have to work together to find your way, challenge yourselves to overcome language and cultural barriers and will have memories – good and bad – to look back on for the years to come.

Nothing teaches patience quite like exploration. You might find that you miss a bus, your train is delayed or your flight has been cancelled. Perhaps you’ll struggle reading a local map and take a while to make it to your dinner reservation or find your way back to where you’re staying. Depending on your travel destination, the situations will be different but the need for patience and understanding will remain the same.

To truly build your patience, understanding and appreciation I would encourage you to travel to somewhere that you do not speak the language. As a society, we’re generally very used to getting what we ask for. Experiencing difficulty communicating with words and having to rely on patience, understanding and acceptance will help you grow as a person and develop non-verbal communication skills like never before.

How you view the world does impact how the world views you. Most often, our perspective on life and all that it encompasses is highly dependent on those we choose to surround ourselves with, our upbringing and our cultural experiences. To truly develop your own perspective, or break away from the routine and find some to begin with, I encourage you to travel.

Visiting a remote village in South Africa or a bustling street in Thailand will allow you to see how other people view the world, daily life and you. Watching people in routines similar to your own, but carried out in immensely different ways, is a highly rewarding experience. You’ll quickly learn how fortunate you are to have such easy access to things such as clean drinking water, delicious foods and even somewhat dependable public transportation.

Travel is a unique bonding experience. Chances are you’ll come across all sorts of people you would never have met in your everyday life. Travel has this fun ability to take different people from completely different upbringings, with totally different views, and create an incredible bond. This can be especially true when you choose to travel alone.

There are tons of travel tour groups that can create planned trips for small or large groups of people. There's also niche tour groups, but most commonly the groups are based on age. If you’re craving a change, are looking to do a little soul searching or just need to step outside of the norm – consider a group tour. I know that sometimes when I travel, I go partially with a group and then partially on my own. You'll walk away with spectacular memories, strong new friendships and immense personal growth. You may be surprised at the new friendships you build or even the opportunity to meet a new romantic partner. Truly, anything is possible!